Popularity of path hooks (PEP 302 custom import)

Question

My project has the ability to run python functions remotely. Doing so requires transmitting modules a given function utilizes. Determining what to send is conducted via a modified modulefinder.

As I modify the modulefinder to support arbitrary path_hooks, I've started to get the impression that path_hooks are not all that popular. Quick google codesearching seems to only show the ZipImporter using them. I've noticed a minor project using it (and even then, its loader doesn't support the PEP 302 extension of get_code, which is needed by the modified modulefinder).

Has anyone come across or created projects that use custom path_hooks to access source code?

Answer 1

Yes, I've coded some path hooks (for one of the obvious purposes: access modules living in other forms of storage besides the filesystem and zipfiles), but never on an open-source project (and actually never needed to support modulefinder in them). What difficulties are you encountering? While I can't share my original code I think I can share the know-how developed with it (though offhand I can't recall any special difficulties -- it has been a while). As for "popular", I guess they will be in direct proportion to the need to site modules "elsewhere" (e.g. in some form of DB), though of course general "usermode file systems" built e.g. using fuse , macfuse and dokan may also allow this (and offer other advantages in terms of generality -- not sure how performance compares).